Over the decade-plus that BGS has been in operation we’ve had the extreme good fortune to curate live performance videos – which we affectionately call Sitch Sessions – all across the country and around the world.
We’ve had Grammy Award winning artists play us tunes while walking down a rural dirt road with a Rocky Mountain background, or amongst a beautiful Aspen grove, or even in a gondola high above Telluride, Colorado.
We’ve had legends like Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell harmonize while festooned in flowers in a vintage Silverstreak trailer and we’ve brought old-time banjo players to downtown LA rooftops to demonstrate their craft.
Wherever we’ve traveled and whomever has found themselves in the beam of our camera lenses, putting together incredible music with picturesque and jaw-dropping settings will always be one of our most favorite things to do. We hope you enjoy these 14 gorgeous Sitch Sessions, with pastoral locations, stunning vistas, verdant trees, blossoming flowers, and the best of the best of roots music.
Is this heaven? Kristin Andreassen, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan made magic amidst the aspen trees just outside Telluride way back in 2014. Some of our all-time favorite sessions were shot in Telluride, and you’ll see quite a few make this list.
This video, in a field of superlative videos, might just be the most gorgeous session we’ve ever produced. In a montane meadow, surrounded by Rocky Mountain peaks, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile perform “Why Only One?” from their 2014 duo album, Bass & Mandolin. Every time we’ve collaborated with the videographers at Mason Jar Music they captured lightning in that mason jar!
A few years back in a BGS team meeting we were chatting about our proudest moments as an organization and someone listed this video. It’s everything we love about Tim O’Brien combined: Colorado, wry charm, a heart-wrenching lyric, lovely (and gritty) clawhammer banjo, and a surprisingly touching and down to earth moment when a passing truck nearly interrupts the shoot. There’s just something about this video that brings you back over and over again; it is constantly on our minds.
Durham, North Carolina-based banjoist and teacher Nathan Bowles might seem a bit out of place on a downtown LA rooftop, but we don’t think so at all. We’ve spent a lot of time having naysayers discount BGS because we’re based in Southern California, but we feel it’s incredibly important to point out – time and time again – how rich, vibrant, and varied the roots music scenes in California are. And we take every chance we get to connect with folks who bring their music to the region.
Heroes, legends, and Americana stalwarts Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell stepped into a vintage Airstream-style trailer decked out with florals – supplied by Rodney’s daughter, Carrie, proprietor of Crowell Floral – and gave us this stunning performance, upstaging the gorgeous setting.
Another from our “Airstream” shoot, the Silverstreak Sessions, guitarists Julian Lage and Chris Eldridge (a good friend of the BGS family) gave us a tender and technical performance of “Rygar” from their 2017 duo album, Mount Royal.
The cream of the Sitch Session crop are certainly the videos whose locations were most off-the-beaten path, like this 2016 performance by Elephant Revival shot at the Pioneertown Mountains Preserve in the Mojave Desert near the infamous Pappy & Harriet’s and Joshua Tree National Park. The light, like the song, is truly golden. Another magical shoot!
Bluegrass Music Hall of Famer Alice Gerrard is a BGS hero, so we’re delighted to have two jaw-dropping Sessions with this legend of old-time, folk, and bluegrass. “Bear Me Away,” unadorned and a capella, will make your heart stop. You can almost feel the Southern humidity just while watching.
During our botanical Silverstreak Sessions, MacArthur “Genius” and Beyoncé collaborator Rhiannon Giddens stopped by the trailer to offer this beautiful tune, “Mal Hombre.” When we first posted this video, our readers had the same reaction we did to her lovely Spanish vocals – “Is there anything Rhiannon can’t do??”
Besides our Billy Strings “Meet Me At the Creek” session, this might be our most-viewed Sitch Session ever. Whether the setting, the number, or the fiery Greensky pickers there are just so many reasons why this performance continues to track with our audiences on YouTube and beyond. If you haven’t seen “Burn Them” yet – shot with a mountainous, Telluride backdrop – it’s time to rectify that!
In 2016, we had a video crew at Old Settlers Music Festival in Texas capturing sessions with a handful of the stellar artists on the lineup. Mandolinist Sierra Hull was promoting her mandolin-and-bass album (made with bassist Ethan Jodziewicz and producer Béla Fleck), Weighted Mind, a sort of sonic reinvention or expansion for the former child prodigy. We captured this performance of the title track beside a babbling stream. Justin Moses, multi-instrumentalist and Hull’s husband, joined her and Jodziewicz supplying backing vocals.
Now here’s an amazing location! Over the years we have collaborated with the individual members of I’m With Her time and time again, so we jumped at the chance to partner on a Sitch Session. This performance of “Ain’t That Fine” – from their 2018 debut, See You Around – was captured at the Fairmount Park Horticulture Center in Philadelphia. The lush and green setting even matches the album art and photographs. Just perfect.
We return to the aspens in Colorado for another song from our shoot with Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Kristin Andreasson in 2014. This time, Jarosz and O’Donovan duet on “Some Tyrant,” a Kate Rusby cover that has been in Jarosz’s repertoire for years. The mandocello, the whisper of the wind in the leaves, the greenish goldish sheen. It’s just lovely. (And 650,000 of y’all agree!)
Lead image: Tim O’Brien